Once again the Roslyn school community is the victim of a grand larceny committed apparently due to a lack of proper supervision and accountability of district employees. While it is heartening to see the efforts by residents to replace the stolen funds, I believe that the school administration is not being held accountable for their role in the theft. Published reports indicate that the stolen funds were left by school employees in an unlocked vault. To state the obvious, there is no sense in securing valuables in an unlocked vault.

In order to hold employees accountable, they must first have direction, in the form of rules and procedures. Are there written procedures in place for district employees on how to properly secure currency? If not, why not?

Who was responsible for securing the cash and checks? When and how are these individuals supervised? Why is cash left overnight in a District facility at any time? Why was cash placed in an unlocked vault? Why weren't these funds deposited the day they came into the possession of the district?

Fund-raising for charitable causes is usually an annual event. Proper procedures for vouchering, safeguarding and depositing funds must be put in place. Surely, there is time during the workday for a district employee to make a bank deposit. The bank's night-deposit box is available if the monies were collected over the weekend. Security deposit bags or envelopes are available from the bank. All that was needed to prevent this theft was to immediately deposit the collected funds, thereby removing opportunity.

I am unaware of the status of the district's internal investigation. Is there one currently being conducted? This investigation, hopefully under way, should have two goals: to determine who the responsible employee(s) may be, and to establish and enforce proper currency vouchering, depositing, and safeguarding procedures. This should be a relatively easy task if it is included in the employee's Tasks and Standards portion of their annual evaluation. Once determined, the guilty party should be disciplined according to applicable Civil Service law.

The people who contribute to the school's fundraisers as well as the adults and students who work hard in an effort to raise monies for charity deserve the assurance that their school district can be relied upon to protect their efforts. Protecting these funds for charity was the responsibility of the adults in charge as well as it was their responsibility to teach the students proper ways to open or re-activate a bank account, secure cash and make deposits. There appears to be no rules for employees to follow and supervisors to enforce in this regard. The principal of the school is ultimately responsible for ensuring that appropriate administrative policies and procedures are in place and that all subordinates are aware of, and comply with them.

I assume that the stolen funds are unable to be recovered from the school district's bonding company due to employee negligence of leaving the vault where they were stored, unlocked. Hopefully I am wrong, but this avenue of fund recovery should be pursued.

The system is broken here. This theft is a symptom of a much larger problem. The administrative organization of the school district must be re-modeled after an efficient one, one which stresses clear lines of authority, responsibility, and discipline for misconduct. When I ran for Board of Education trustee, my platform emphasized the need to bring back a sense of integrity and accountability, along with an efficient organizational model to the district.

All employees must be held accountable for their actions, or in this case of the unlocked vault, their inactions. There have been many positive changes in our school district. However, until the school district's administrative model is changed and replaced by one where responsible supervision and discipline are clearly enforced lack of public confidence, theft, any employee misconduct will continue.

Keith Kopinski